Stuart's Selective Guide to Growing Vegetables

The Holiday season is filled with all kinds of observances, some festive and some solemn, some well-known and some obscure. Although one won't find this on any calendar, between Christmas Day and New Year's Day the United States Postal Service will begin to deliver gardening catalogs to anyone who has placed a mail order for a packet of seed in the past half-decade. And what a delight it is to paw through the bright, glossy pages, thick with radiant photos of fruits and vegetables! Page-after-page of dazzling new cultivars from the proving grounds in the Pacific Northwest, obscure and ancient heirlooms saved from the brink of extinction from some Hungarian grandma in the wilds of New Hampshire and the tried-and-true customer favorites sure to be the center piece of any family picnic, barbeque and cookout.

What a jolly time it is to spend hours plotting and planning away at your garden-to-be while the ground lay frozen outside under a blanket of snow, I know. But what about someone new to gardening? There seems to be so much to choose from. The seed catalogs and online sites seem to promise a cornucopia of healthy fruits and vegetables for your family table. Few, however, have the luxury of land available to grow everything and anything they set their hearts upon. If you did have a thousand square feet to sow your Victory Garden, believe me, doing all of the preparation and the sowing and the transplanting and weeding and watering and harvesting throughout the year takes a lot of time and effort. Anyone who has kept a garden for more than a few consecutive years has learned to temper their aspirations with a mind for conservation and economy.

With this in mind, I would like to share with the gardeners of the upper-Midwest, a selective guide to gardening vegetable crops. Herein are some practical considerations for why you might want to allocate your time, money and efforts to some crops and why you might want to consider abstaining from these. This, of course, is a entirely subjective list and based not only from my own experiences, but of a culmination of my own mind and tastes. Good harvests to you!

Easy to grow from transplants. Many different cultivars, very productive yields possible, many with excellent storage.

Delicate plants with shallow roots can require patient hand weeding. Onions must cure in a large, very well ventilated area for over a week once harvested. Growing from seed is cheaper but more difficult and time consuming.

Prince of the early summer side dish. Good variety, many of which cannot be found in stores. Pole beans can climb fences allowing for vertical gardening. Bush Beans are extremely prolific. Easy to grow. Other varieties can be grown for dry bean production.

Easy to transplant. Exceptional variety to choose from. Reknowned homegrown flavor. Very productive and continuous yields possible in late Summer.

Difficult and slow to grow from seed. Susceptible to disease, especially if crowded or if there is a wet Summer. May not thrive if the Summer is insufficiently hot. Supermarket and farmstand availability of superior tasting and heirloom varieties are becoming seasonally abundant.

Satisfaction of sowing seed as soon as soil thaws and harvesting something in May. Many varieties are very cold resistant and can survive hard freezes.

Soil must be workable very early in spring. Cold, overcast Springs may result in insufficient growth and sudden warmth will cause pre-mature bolting. Short harvest season and common year round in supermarkets.

Easy to start indoors. Large plants are easy to weed. Many heat tolerant cultivars.

Cold, overcast Springs may result in insufficient growth in some varieties before heads develop resulting in poor yields. Requires a lot of garden space. Large harvests require unrealistically large refrigeration space. Many varieties are common in supermarkets year round and inexpensive seasonally at farmstands.

Very susceptible to total crop loss from disease carrying insects such as the squash bug. Many varieties are common in supermarkets year round and can be found at farmstands everywhere. After heavy rains, every neighbor who has a garden will be giving oversized fruits away.

Easy to grow from seed, especially in a seed tape. Many different varieties. Can be used for the leaves in a salad or for the root. Roots can spend a longer time in the soil without splitting (like carrots) so do not have to be harvested all at once. One root makes a lot of juice for cheap.

Beets and chard are a nutrient hog. Common beets can be bought rather inexpensively.

King of the summer side dish. Many different varieties to choose from. High yielding. Easy to grow.

Requires a lot of space: pollinated by wind, many plants must be planted for uniform pollination. Tall plants will cast a long shadow into other crops which will then get blown down in high winds and thunderstorms. Birds and varmints may then wreck harvests. Some varieties have a very short harvest window for optimum sweetness. Large harvests all at once require unrealistically large refrigeration space. Many varieties are common in supermarkets year round and inexpensive seasonally at farmstands.

Cold, overcast Springs may result in insufficient growth before heads develop or bolt. Large harvests require unrealistically large refrigeration space. Many varieties are common in supermarkets year round and inexpensive seasonally at farmstands

Transplants must be protected from slugs and caterpillars. Requires a lot of space. Tricky to get the timing right: started too early and the sprouts may bolt on the stalks, too late or too cold or cloudy of an autumn and the plant won't have sufficient growth to yield. Seasonally common at farmstands and supermarkets.

Vines will climb wire fences to save space. Many uncommon cultivars cannot be found in supermarkets. High yields are possible.

Rambling vines require a lot of space to grow. Very succeptible to total crop loss from disease carrying insects. Many varieties are common in supermarkets year round and inexpensive seasonally at farmstands.

Perennial beds require a lot of room (hundreds of crowns) to yield large enough to make a meal out of and take several years to develop. Very labor intensive to prepare these beds which then cannot be a part crop rotation plans. Seasonally very common at supermarkets and farmstands.

Rambling vines require a lot of space to grow. Succeptible to total crop loss from disease carrying insects. Many varieties are common in supermarkets year round and inexpensive seasonally at farmstands.

Small seed and slow growth makes this difficult to start and to weed. Many heirloom varieties are have become popular in supermarkets year round and inexpensive seasonally at farmstands. Must harvest before the roots split and heavy harvests take a lot of room to refrigerate.

Otherwise, common varieties can be found year-long in supermarkets. Cold, overcast Springs may result in insufficient growth before heads develop resulting in small yields. Plants require a lot of room.

Watermelons require consistent warmth uncommon in the upper Midwest for heavy, sweet melons. Rambling vines require a lot of room. As with other melons, susceptible to diseases. It is more fun to go hunting n strange neighborhoods for that guy who has a pickup truck full of really good melons from down south.